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Comment by thot_experiment | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if we'll ever chance across some silphium with enough genetic data to revive it in one of these archeological finds. I've always found that story fascinating and I'd love to see the mystery solved one day.

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Interestingly, even many of the plants with modern descendants were very different in centuries previous. Ryan North gave a talk at the Long Now Foundation recently with an interesting bit on how much selective breeding has changed food. It starts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQg9YPSfAxg#t=29m

Especially interesting to me were the images of watermelon from painted still lifes over the centuries. It was clearly a very different fruit to the one we know today.

I’ve heard about the watermelons, but it seems to be debunked. See this HN comment from awhile ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23643871

(But I love Ryan North)

Thanks! You should let him know, as he gave this talk very recently.

There's a scientist that thinks they found some live silphium:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/silphium

Wow, I hadn't heard of that, but what a fascinating plant. Apparently, it's seeds or fruits may have been heart-shaped, and it was used as an aphrodisiac, which may be the reason why we associate the heart shape with love.

It is also thought to have been a contraceptive and abortifacient.

My understanding is that we don't even know for sure if it went extinct. We just don't know what it actually was/is. There's been a number of extant species that people have proposed as being silphium, but it's very hard to say if any of them actually are, and if so, which.

Some people posit that it's just another varietal of asafetida.

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